Although he wasn't introduced to the Fast and the Furious film series until 2011's Fast Five, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's Luke Hobbs has become one of the franchise's most popular characters, so much so that he's branching off from the main narrative next year. After first clashing in Furious 7 and then fighting again before hesitantly joining forces in The Fate of the Furious, Hobbs and Jason Statham's Deckard Shaw are teaming up for the Hobbs & Shaw spinoff, but don't think that this means the new movie will feel like a traditional Fast and the Furious story. As director David Leitch pointed out, Hobbs and Shaw come from different "worlds" than most of the other Fast and the Furious protagonists, which allows for their movie to feel different than the previous entries. Leitch explained:

We really do want to set off on our own specific journey with these characters. If you look at the worlds that they come from in the franchise, they're not from the street racing world. The first movies in Fast, it was all about street racing, and then it became sort of a heist franchise, and then it became a spy franchise. I think Jason's character is definitely from the spy world, and Dwayne's character is more of an agent, right? Working with the government. We're going to lean more into their worlds. But I think we still want the same sort of level of spectacle and fun that the Fast [movies] have.

What started out as some movies about street racing and pulling off elaborate heists has morphed over the last decade into a franchise that sees its heroes frequently saving the world, but there's still the focus on cars and pulling off crazy maneuvers in them. From what David Leitch told CinemaBlend's own Eric Eisenberg, while Hobbs & Shaw will feel like just as much of a spectacle as the recent Fast and the Furious movies, it will have more of a spy bent to it, which makes sense. After all, for years Luke Hobbs was an agent for the United States Diplomatic Security Service, while Deckard Shaw was an assassin for the United Kingdom Special Forces. If you're going to make a movie centered around these two, it would be foolish not to capitalize on their backgrounds as government operatives.

While Luke Hobbs remained with the DSS until the events of The Fate of the Furious, Deckard Shaw targeted him and the other Fast and the Furious protagonists after his brother, Owen, was critically injured at the end of Fast & Furious 6, leading to Deckard being one of Furious 7's main villains. Deckard was recruited to stop Cipher in The Fate of the Furious, and even though this was the man who killed Han, he was welcomed as part of the team by the end of the movie. It hasn't been revealed yet what's in store for Hobbs and Shaw in their spinoff movie, but there are two things we can look forward to: the duo will have the same amusing rapport they had in the previous movies, and the story won't feel like just another standard Fast and the Furious installment.

Hobbs & Shaw hits theaters on August 2, 2019, and we here at CinemaBlend will bring you all the latest updates on the spinoff as they come in. For now, don't forget to look through our 2018 release schedule to you can plan silver screen experiences this year accordingly.